Camino de Santiago

UNESCO World Heritage Site (Routes Of Santiago De Compostela, Inscribed 1993 And Extended 2015), A Network Of Pilgrimage Roads Across Northern Spain Converging On Santiago De Compostela · Sarria, Galicia

Not a place but a route, or rather a network of them, converging on one cathedral in Galicia. People have walked to Santiago since the ninth century, the roads that fed the pilgrimage built the towns along the way, and after centuries of decline the whole thing revived from almost nothing in the 1980s to hundreds of thousands of walkers a year. The Camino Frances is the one most people mean, running about eight hundred kilometres from the French Pyrenees across northern Spain, though the Portugues, the Norte and the Primitivo all arrive at the same door. The practical shape is simple: a waymarked path with a yellow arrow, hostels along it at walking intervals, a credential stamped as you go, and a certificate at the end for the last hundred kilometres on foot. What people find is that the walking is the easy part and the company is the reason they remember it, which is not what anyone expects to be told before setting out and is what almost everyone says afterwards.

Camino Frances, Sarria, Galicia, 27600, Spain

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED, and the route has none: it is public path and road, walkable at any hour, and many walkers start before dawn. What has hours are the services along it. ALBERGUES typically open in the early afternoon, fill on a first-come basis, impose a lights-out and require everyone to leave in the morning. The PILGRIM'S OFFICE in Santiago keeps daytime hours and queues badly in summer. MANY ALBERGUES CLOSE IN WINTER. Confirm seasonal opening before walking out of season.

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